


Drink the World

by So_Ill_Continue



Series: Shiro, Alive [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Dehumanization, Gen, Gen Work, Mental Breakdown, Platonic Relationships, Pre-Canon, Punishment, Shiro (Voltron) Whump, Shiro (Voltron)'s Missing Year, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Unreliable Narrator, Violence, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:49:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25637593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/So_Ill_Continue/pseuds/So_Ill_Continue
Summary: Shiro chokes on his sip of salvation.ORShiro faces his punishment."Relative peace reigns in the cell and Shiro, frazzled and terrified and so damn happy to be alive, soaks in the stability like bleached desert sand. There’s literally nothing else he can do, not while his body refuses to so much as twitch a finger on his command. He can only wait for whatever punishment is on its way. He can only wait for Sendak."
Relationships: Matt Holt & Shiro, Sendak & Shiro (Voltron)
Series: Shiro, Alive [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1809898
Comments: 7
Kudos: 26





	Drink the World

**Author's Note:**

> **Please mind the tags for violence and the mature rating.** Shiro is in a lot of distress here, and it only gets worse. 
> 
> Without context, this work will not make sense. For this reason, **please read _Like a Grasping Soul_ and _Thunder in a Restless Mind_ prior to starting this story.** For full enjoyment, I suggest also reading _Careful with that Light,_ but it is not strictly necessary.

It takes one look at Matt’s relieved face for Shiro to crumble like a paper house. His breathing snags, his face crumples, his knees slip and crack against the ground. Pain rips over him, body alerting him to burns, scrapes, cracked bones, a twisted ankle he hadn’t even registered. His mind rebels, clashing as it shouts _alive alive alive_ as loudly as _fuck fuck fuck._

It’s too much. He can’t breathe. He’s going to shake apart. He’s going to die.

Shiro’s mind fuzzes, grows dizzy, skips. He looks at the floor, purple and dirty and cold. The floor is gone. He looks into Matt’s face, much closer than it was before. Looks at Matt’s lips, recognizes the shape of words he doesn’t hear. The world ripples like the surface of a pond disturbed by a pebble.

He falls forward, half fainting, half collapsing. Skinny arms wrap around him, boney hands rub circles into his back. Shiro flinches and chokes on a gasp; his back _hurts._

Buzz. Tilt. Ripple like a pond.

Hot breath is ghosting over the shell of his ear and Shiro remembers that Matt is talking. He hears what he thinks is his name; it’s hard to make out over the roaring, tinny ringing in his ears.

His brain is overflowing, bursting, and words roll from his lips in an unstoppable flood. They are, for the most part, unchosen. “I’m sorry,” he mewls, snotty and gross as he presses his face tightly into Matt’s neck. “I’m so stupid I didn’t remember I’m sorry I’m so sorry.” He curls forward as another sob shakes his body, leaving him gasping like a landed fish. The muscles in his back clench. “Matt I forgot what do I do I’m sorry Matt.”

The arms squeeze him tighter, which hurts, and then start to rock them from side to side. The ringing dims just enough for more words to slide through. They’re not words, though; it’s just the long push of air past pursed lips, over and over with only sharp inhales in between. Matt’s shushing him.

Any other moment, on Earth or in space or aboard this fucking horrible ship, Shiro would have recoiled from that noise. Now Shiro latches onto it like it’s the last thread of light in the universe. He pulls it in with a gasp, arms numb between them. Tears, precious and few, sting his burned, raw face.

Shiro sobs and shakes in Matt’s arms. Sobs as his body screams, then snarls, then settles. Sobs as his muscles tense, then cramp, then give completely. Sobs as he registers that he’s alive, that he’s won. Sobs as he wrangles his bitter resentment at his own stupid self and faces the unknowable abyss of _what’s going to happen now?_

He crossed Sendak, the most powerful Galran he’s met so far. And it wasn’t even on purpose. He hadn’t been standing up to his captors, hadn’t been resisting at all. He’d just forgotten, like a goddamn schoolkid.

God, it’d be funny if he wasn’t too exhausted to find the joke.

Shiro doesn’t relax, not exactly. He’s terrified of what’s to come and just because he’s losing his shit doesn’t mean that he’s not still shaking and itchy from the fight like always. But his body is too utterly spent not to be limp in Matt’s arms. Shiro can’t even hold his head up; it just lolls against where Matt’s shoulder meets his neck as if he were an infant.

Relative peace reigns in the cell and Shiro, frazzled and terrified and so damn happy to be alive, soaks in the stability like bleached desert sand. There’s literally nothing else he can do, not while his body refuses to so much as twitch a finger on his command. He can only wait for whatever punishment is on its way. He can only wait for Sendak.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

Sendak’s men enter their tiny cell unannounced. Shiro hasn’t even stopped crying yet, but he hears when the door crashes against the exterior metal wall. Sees the dim hallway lights seep into the dimmer cell. Feels Matt go rigid beneath him, frozen like a rabbit in the hunter’s den.

Matt’s confused cry is cut short by a blaster butt to the forehead. Shiro’s ripped from his arms as his friend topples backward and he is heaved up into the air and seized by half a dozen hands. His terror spikes, heart stuttering and spasming in his chest. The joy of surviving fizzles, pops and dies.

He can’t fight as they drag him to the right wall, as they force him onto his knees, as they hold his wrists to either side. He can’t even control his body enough to maintain the pose under his own power; if they weren’t holding his arms like that he’d be going face first into the floor. As it is, he lists forward and his head lolls on his chest. It doesn’t last long; strong fingers in his hair quickly remedy the issue and the grip fucking hurts.

When the whirlwind of activity finally rolls to a stop, Shiro is left staring up at Commander Sendak. He’s not smiling like he was during their last little gettogether. His gaze his cold and hard, jaw tense and lip twitching.

Shiro’s entire body trills with a terror so intense that he momentarily forgets to breathe, trembling under the weight of Sendak’s iced fury. Then Sendak nods, just a barely there tuck of his chin, and Shiro is thrown forward onto his stomach.

A heavy combat boot lands between his shoulder blades, pinning him, and any remaining air is ripped from his body in a soundless scream. His arms are tugged taunt behind him by one massive paw, locking his shoulders and smashing his face against the floor from the angle. Meanwhile, hands are parting his legs, trapping his shins against the cold metal a shoulder width apart.

With mindless desperation, Shiro heaves air into his lungs, animalistic whimpers of fear and pain sliding from his lips as he pants into the floor. His body works against him, forcing words he barely registers saying. “I’m sorry,” he sputters, so utterly shameless that the feeling isn’t even real in abstraction. He doesn’t care what he says right now, not if it’ll stop whatever is about to happen. “I’m sorry, sir, please, I’m sorry. I’m _sorry_.”

Just like with every plea Shiro’s made since arriving in this unending nightmare, he is ignored entirely, and Sendak chooses instead to adjust his position until the shiny tips of his boots nearly meet Shiro’s nose. They’re all he can see.

“We had a deal, Champion,” Sendak notes coolly, his casual tone undercut with something darker, something that calls for retribution, and the thought is so totally unfair that Shiro would scream if he could find the air. “We had a deal and you sat at my table and you ate my food, am I remembering that correctly?”

Faintly, Shiro hears something that sounds an awful lot like a gasp. He swallows. “I’m sorry, sir.”

The change is immediate.

“ _Sorry?_ ” Sendak sneers, so venomous that Shiro cringes even in the tight hold. Anger, that’s all Shiro can hear, and he’s never felt more like prey. “ _Sorry._ So _sorry._ Such a _sorry little-“_ Sendak growls, Shiro hears the noise turn rough and wet before Sendak’s spit splatters over his bangs. It’s followed quickly by the toe of Sendak’s boot, which he grinds viciously into Shiro’s forehead, sending crumbles of dirt and dust cascading into his eyes and shocks of pain through his bullied skull. “Ungrateful wretch! I asked you a question! Answer me!”

The boot continues to grate into his head, and Shiro can barely scrape together enough braincells to remember the query. At last, he hisses, “Yes, sir,” and shuts his eyes tight against the shower of grit. “Yes, sir.”

That, at least, is enough to halt the relentless grinding. Instead, the toe pauses and starts to tap against his forehead, so light and casual that it would be insulting if Shiro were still capable of feeling such things. “Yes indeed,” Sendak agrees, so reasonable sounding that Shiro might be reminded of old classroom praise if not for the icy steel underneath. “Pray tell, then, my Champion, what compelled you to strike the Slayer’s tail? Was it our deal?”

_Tap tap tap_ goes the boot against his brow. _Tap tap tap._

Shiro can’t possibly shake his head, although his neck makes a small abortive twitch as it attempts the gesture. “No, sir, please. I –“ The sole mashes into his skull once more, nearly as forceful as before. A warning. Shiro’s words devolve into a thready whine.

“Silence, cur,” Sendak seethes. “Your pathetic groveling will earn you no favor, and you have yet to answer my final question.”

A long, chilling pause, filled only by Shiro’s raspy gasps and the ambient noises always present in the slave stalls. Shiro begs for an end, prays to a nameless deity he’s never met. And then:

“Where did you swear to land the final blow?”

Shiro shakes. Bends. His throat closes, although the words still squeak by. “The ankl-“

Something solid and heavy crashes into his twisted left ankle. The world tilts, and his vision whites, and he comes back to just in time for it to happen again. He screams, raw and animalistic, as the joint snap-crunches under the third blow.

Time stops tracking. Reality quakes. There is hot wetness beneath him. His ankle is on fire. He is screaming, and he can’t stop. He is thrashing, and he can’t stop that either. He is pain and he is numb and his right ankle _crunch crunch crack._

White. Black. Ripple like a (frozen) pond. Crunch like a frozen (pond). Koi in the pond of his old neighbor’s house. Shiro is falling, falling, falling, caught in the abyss. Shiro has lost the last strand of light in the universe.

Shiro is lost.

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the strangest piece, style-wise, that I've ever written. I like how it turned out, but because of its oddness, I would greatly appreciate outside perspectives, particularly if they detail what worked and what needs improvement. As always, kudos and bookmarks are also welcome.


End file.
